He is also the co-founder of and a senior adviser to the Berggruen Institute. The Achilles heel of consumer democracies is that there is precious little constituency for the future in the present. All the feedback signals — in politics, culture and the market — are geared to short-term gratification.
In each case, the incentives of the system deliver what the most influential demographic wants, and when they want it, which is now. From fast fashion to electoral contests to quarterly earnings reports, the system is responsive to the pursuit of happiness defined by the near horizon. The consequence of this, which Harvard sociologist Daniel Bell argued more than half a century ago in his book, “The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism,” is that the present ends up eating the future to the detriment of the long-term sustainability of society.
The recent Noema essay by Simon Curtis and Ian Klaus titled “Americans Are Losing The Long Game” is excellent on this point. While state-guided dirigiste policies that champion and support strategic industries deemed critical for the future are roundly frowned upon in market economies, the opposite rigidity of the short-term consumerist mentality is less appreciated as a critical failure of good governance. Yet, unless societies prepare for, subsidize and invest in the kind of future they want, they will never get there.
Of all the major powers, post-Mao China stands out in taking control of its future without sacrificing the present. Over recent decades, it has both lifted hundreds of millions into general prosperity while, at the same time, swiftly conquering the key industries of a sustainable future, from green technology to artificial intelligence. One has to admit that the Middle Kingdom’s mix of a long-term planning framework checked by robust market signals and bolstered by strategically deployed subsidies has worked.
Indeed, it has worked too well: Its overproduction is spilling out and flooding world markets, threatening to displace domestic jobs and industry elsewhere. China has not arrived at this point overnight. It has been a long time coming.
In 1987, the ideology chief of the Communist Party politburo at the time, Hu Qili, told me in Beijing: “The market is not a feature unique to capitalism. Capitalism does not have the patent right over the market economy. What we are trying to create is a new and unprecedented modality where planning is combined with the commodity economy, where the state regulates the market, and the market guides the enterprises.” The overall economy is steered by a one-party political system designed to reach consensus over long-term goals that have the decisive thrust to be carried out over many years without a break in continuity.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
